China rejects UN criticism on North Korea
China says it is right to send North Korean defectors back home to face prison camps or possible execution, saying they are not refugees but "illegal migrants"
China has defended its long-held practice of sending the North Korean defectors it catches back home to face a grisly fate, describing them as "illegal immigrants".
The country's foreign ministry was forced to respond after a United Nations report accused Beijing of "aiding and abetting" Pyongyang's crimes against humanity.
An estimated 150,000 North Koreans have escaped into China in the past 20 years, around 20,000 of whom have headed on to South Korea.
However, Beijing pursues a "rigorous policy of forcibly repatriating [defectors]" whom it catches, according to the United Nations report into North Korean human rights abuses published on Monday.
"Many such nationals of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea should be recognised as refugees fleeing persecution," said the report, which likened the regime to Nazi Germany. "They are thereby entitled to international protection."
It added that, in some cases, "Chinese officials also appear to provide information on those apprehended" to their counterparts in North Korea.
In February 2012, the repatriation of nine North Koreans led to protests outside the Chinese embassy in Seoul.
The United Nations team also complained that China had blocked them from visiting the border region with North Korea in order to research the situation, and from speaking to experts in Beijing.
A spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry repeated Beijing's view that North Koreans crossing the border were "illegal migrants". "We cannot accept this unreasonable criticism," he said. "We believe that politicising human rights issues is not conducive towards improving a country's human rights."
Even before the release of the 374-page United Nations report, compiled after a year of interviews with some 80 former North Koreans now living abroad, China indicated it would continue to stand firm with its old ally.
The report warned Kim Jong-un, the 31-year-old leader of North Korea, that he and his henchmen could one day face prosecution by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.
North Korean leaders use murder, torture, slavery, sexual violence, mass starvation and other abuses to prop up the regime and terrorise "the population into submission," the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights said.
However, the Chinese Foreign ministry quickly responded. "We believe that taking human rights issues to the International Criminal Court is not helpful to improving a country's human rights situation," the spokesman said.
Without China's assent, no case would be viable.
The foreign ministry would not be drawn on whether China would use its veto powers if the report was brought to the UN Security Council for further action, saying it was a "hypothetical question".
As the spokesman responded to the criticism, China's deputy foreign minister, Liu Zhenmin, arrived in Pyongyang, the most senior envoy that Beijing has sent since Kim Jong-un executed his uncle, Jang Song-thaek, in December.
There was a mixed response from the Chinese public to a set of illustrations posted by the United Nations on Sina Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, which sought to capture the horrific abuse doled out by North Korean officials.
One of the images showed a man in a tiny cell reaching towards a rat while others showed prisoners pulling a cart filled with corpses. They were released to accompany the UN report.
While some Chinese said that they should not be allied to such a regime and that China should intervene, others said the cartoons were simply part of a disinformation campaign by the UN.
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